Kristi Hannah, Omar Thornton’s girlfriend, is now being widely quoted as supporting the claim that her boyfriend’s shooting rampage was triggered by racism at the workplace. Get the story here, and see photos and video below.
The girlfriend of the man who stormed into a Connecticut beer distributor, killed 9 co-workers, and then himself, is speaking out today. Now that the initial shock of the massacre has worn off, people are beginning to look more closely into what might drive a man to such extremes.
Obviously nothing in this world can justify such an atrocious act, but just as with Columbine, people want answers. Many of those clues were brought to light today as the 911 call, placed by Thornton himself, was made public. In the call he tells the operator:
“You probably want to know the reason for this…This place is a racist place. They treat me bad over here and all the other black employees bad over here too…So I took it into my own hands and handled the problem…I wish I couldn’t got more of the people.”
Company officials insist that his claim is bogus, citing a complete lack of any formal complaints suggesting there were any racial tensions where he worked. But his girlfriend, Kristi Hannah, suggests otherwise, even pointing to a cell phone picture he sent her of bathroom graffiti:
“He said every day when he’d come in, there’d be new stuff on the [bathroom] wall…One was a hangman with a noose around his neck and underneath it said, ‘Kill the n-word’…I know what I seen on that wall and that picture and that would make somebody go crazy…If they keep doing it to somebody over and over and over and over and over. And I know that was happening to him because no one just wakes up one day and does that.”
Unreal. For more on the story, check here. Also, I’ve included some photos and video of Kristi Hannah, Omar Thornton’s girlfriend below.
August 8th, 2010 at 11:18 am
This racial inequality also reverses itself in the workplace where blacks exceed employment of whites. I have more minority friends than white although I am white; however I was fired after 4 years at a daycare for “making a racial comment” by a educated black director who didn’t want white hands touching her newborn who was housed there. So forget the whines black people….you don’t get sympathy as a group from me, although I like my minority friends…they do not practice reverse discrimination.
August 8th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
I believe that Omar complained to his union and the union failed to file grievances with company. A lot of people don’t know that unionized employees don’t actually file grievances. They make their complaint to their union and it’s the union that files the grievance. Employees have the right to the grievance procedure, but it is the union that controls access to the grievance procedure and it’s the union that decides if a grievance is filed or not file.
So an employee could make a complaint to their union and their union decides not to file a grievance, leaving no record of the employee complaint. It doesn’t mean the employee didn’t complain to their union. It could simply mean the union didn’t file file a grievance with the employer.
Furthermore, it was not in Omar’s best interest to resign his employment. And it’s very strange. No decent union would allow a member to be resign in that situation. The employee is fired – terminated from their employment. Termination is an automatic grievance by a union. It seems the resignation was preferred to avoid filing a grievance.
If in fact Omar was caught stealing, he would not have been the first employee. employees caught stealing are fired, Then the union files a grievance and sometimes the termination is converted to a suspension. Had Omar been terminated a grievance would have been filed and it would have been the vehicle to present his complaints.
But it seems he was denied once again that opportunity. It’s not that surprising that he included several union officials in his killing spree. They denied him access to the grievance procedure to resolve his complaints right until the end.
August 9th, 2010 at 9:28 am
@Christine: You seem like some clueless dope and you don’t know WTF you are talking about. Omar Thornton was an obvious nut job who was in fact caught stealing on videotape. If it weren’t for him being in the Teamsters Union, that videotape probably would have just been shown to the cops first instead, and then Omar would have been arrested at his own home before he could even bring all of those guns to work that day. The cops have so far even arrested somebody who was caught on the same videotape accepting stolen product from Omar Thornton. Also, just because somebody is in union doesn’t mean that he or she cannot file discrimination complaints themselves directly with local, state, and federal agencies like the federal EEOC or the state human rights commission. You made it seem like Omar was helpless to do anything about this supposed racism at his company – what a crock that is.
August 9th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
Racism exists and uneducated people will stop it the only way they know how. Basically, violence stops when racism stops.
August 9th, 2010 at 11:18 pm
I’m sorry, i haven’t seen the Video Tape of Omar taking the beer yet.
August 10th, 2010 at 6:06 am
@all4real: We’ll all be seeing that videotape of Omar stealing company product a lot sooner than we’ll ever see those cell phone pictures of the racist graffiti in the company men’s room, because those cell phone pictures don’t really exist. The cops are still using the videotape to conduct an ongoing criminal investigation of who received stolen property from Omar.